History as the Story of Liberty / Edition 1

by Benedetto Croce, Sylvia Sprigge

Overview

Benedetto Croce (1866–1952), who is perhaps best known as the author in 1902 of Aesthetics, wrote History as the Story of Liberty in 1938, when the Western world had succumbed to the notion that history is a creature of blind force. A reviewer at the time noted the importance of Croce’s belief that “the central trend in the evolution of man is the unfolding of new potentialities, and that the task of the historian is to discover and emphasize this trend: the story of liberty.” As Croce himself writes, “Even in the darkest and crassest times liberty trembles in the lines of poets and affirms itself in the pages of thinkers and burns, solitary and magnificent, in some men who cannot be assimilated by the world around them.” The first edition in English of History as the Story of Liberty appeared in London in 1941. The new Liberty Fund edition includes modest improvements to the translation by Folke Leander and arranged by Claes Ryn.

Claes G. Ryn is Professor of Politics at the Catholic University of America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780865972698
Publisher:	Liberty Fund Inc.
Publication date:	08/01/2000
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	395
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

Table of Contents

Foreword xi
Preface xv

Part I

1. What Makes a History Book History 3
2. Truth in History Books 8
3. The Unity of an Historical Work 13
4. The Historical Meaning of Necessity 18
5. Historical Knowledge Considered as Complete Knowledge 23
6. The Categories of History and the Forms of the Spirit 29
7. The Distinction between Action and Thought 32
8. Historiography as Liberation from History 35
9. History Considered as a Pemise of the Struggle between Value and Non-value 38
10. History as Action 43
11. Moral Activity 49
12. History as the History of Liberty 54

Part II

HISTORICISM AND ITS HISTORY

1. Its Own Character and the Beginning of Its Own Age 61
2. Histoircism Complete and Incomplete 76
3. The Anecdote 124
4. The Imagination--The Anecdote and Historiography 134
5. Philology, History and Philosophy 141
6. The "Philosophy of History" 149
7. Philosophy as an Antiquated Idea 157
8. The Identity of the Judgment of Events with the Knowledge of Their Genesis 161
9. Objections 165

Part III

HISTORIOGRAPHY AND POLITICS

1. The So-called Irrational in History 173
2. Political Historiography 183
3. Historians and Politicians 188
4. Historiography--Partisan and Non-partisan 193
5. The Prepatory and Non-determinate Character of Historiography as Regards Action 203
6. The Need for Historical Knowledge Where Action Is Concerned 214
Two Marginal Notes 219

Part IV

HISTORIOGRAPHY AND MORALS

1. Moral Judgment in Historiography 227
2. Psychological Historiography 236
3. Religious Historiography 242
4. Ethico-Political Historiography and Economic Facts 246
5. Political Parties and Their Historical Character 251
6. Strength and Violence, Reason and Impulse 261
7. Moral Life and Economic Ordinances 268
8. Ideal Perpetuity and Historical Formations 273
9. Religious Piety and Religion 279
10. History and Utopia 286

Part V

PROSPECTS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY

1. History Does Not Repeat Itself and Does Not Preserve Itself Intact 295
2. Shades of Agnosticism, Mysticism and Scepticism, and the Light of Historical Truth 303
3. Humanity in Fragments and Integral Humanity 310
4. History to Be Written and History Not to Be Written 314
5. Historiography and Naturalism 321
6. Nature as History, Yet Not History Written by Us 326
7. Prehistory and History 333
8. Chronological and Historical Epochs 337
9. Natural Species and Historical Formations 343
10. Poetry and Historiography 348
11. Historicism and Humanism 354

Index 361